UNI f ED N AJ IONS S&'3. general Distr. RESTRICTED assembly A/CN.2/R.7^ 11 August 195^

ORIGINAL: . • ENGLISH

COMMITTEE ON CONTRIBUTIONS'

CONSIDERATION OF REQUESTS'RECEIVED FROM SPECIALIZED AGENCIES FOR RECOMMENDATION AND ADVICE ON THEIR SCALES OF CONTRIBUTIONS

eguest received from the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization

Report by the Secretary-General

1. The following communication has been received by the Secretary-General from the Director-General of the United Nations Educational, Scientific arid Cultural Organization:

' , 5 August 195^ Sir, • "I have the honour to refer you to your letter AFS 351/2/03 of the 23rd December 19^9 and to the Resolution (A/11^7 B.) adopted by the General Assembly on 2^th November 19^9 under the terms of which the Assembly has authorised the Committee on Contributions to recommend or advise on the scale of contributions for a specialised agency if requested by"the agency to do so.

Following the practice adopted by Unesco in the past, it is my intention to recommend to the Eighth Session of the General Conference .of Unes co that the scale of contributions for Member States for the years 1955 and 1956 shall be based on the scale of the United Nations suitably adjusted to take into consideration the difference in membership between the two. organisations, and any other special factor which the Conference may wish to include. .

As you are aware the membership of Unesco includes a number,of Member Spates who are at present not members of t he United Nations, -.and it has been the practice in the p ast for this Organisation to request the United Nations Committee on Contributions to provide information as to the theoretical probable percentage for these Member States>,in order that such percentages may be used as a basis for. calculating the Unesco scale.

5^-22188 A/CN.2/R.71* English Page 2

At the time of writing there are 16 Mem ber States of Unesco who are not members of the United Nations, and there are a further two sta tes which have applied for membership and whose case will be considered by the Eighth session of the General Confere nce, A list of these 18 states i s given in the annexl/ attached to this letter, and it will be appreciated if the Committee on Contributions could consider the theoretical probable percentages for these states based upon the same considerations as are used in fixing the percentage contributions of state s who are members of th e United Nations. It is my intention to submit the information thus provided by t he Committee on Contributions to the Eighth session of the General Conference, to assist that body in formulating a scale of contributions for the financial period 1955/56. By so doing the Confe rence is assured of having before it up-to-date figures based upon the most recent information available to the Committee on Contributions, and this will e nsure that to the maximum extent possible there is an equity of treatment between those Member States of Unesco who are members of the United Nations and tho se who at present are not members of the Unite d Nations.

The information given to this Organisation on this matter in the past has been of the greatest assistance, and I can assure you that any help which your Committee is able to render to Unesco in this matter will be most gratefully received at the forthcoming session of ou r General Conference."

(signed) Luther H. Evans, Dire ctor-Ge nera1

2. In connexion with the Committee's review of the theoretical probable percentages for members of UNESCO that are not Members of th e United Nations, the following extract from a communication of 8 April 195^ received from UNESCO is given: "Many of our Member States who are not Members of the United Nations feel that they are at a disadvantage because they are unable to present their views to the Committee on Contributions and the Director-General feels that he sho uld do all that he can to ens ure that these Members receive as favourable treatment as is possible. It was his intention, therefore, to write to these Member States and invit e them to submit such observations as they consider would be helpful to the Committee in arriving at the correct assessment. Before doing so, however, he felt that you should be consulted to see.whether you think that the Committee would accept these observations which Unesco would submit on behalf of the Members concerned."

1/ See Annex I. A/CN.2/R.7*+ English Page 3

3. In reply, UNESCO was informed by letter of 23 April 195*+ that assurance had been given by the Chairman of the Committ ee on Contributions that the Committee would be. glad to consider any information relevant to the work of the Commi ttee that was available at the time of the meetings. Under this arrangement UNESCO has submitted the following material received from States that are members of UNESCO, but not members of the United Nations:

State : Information Received Approximate estimates of national income, population and per capita income. Ceylon The latest statistics on the national income for Ceylon for the years 1951, 1952 and 1953- No change in the national inc ome can be reported. The national income per capita is considered to be still on the level estimated by the United Nations experts three years ago, namely $35.00, Estimate of the national income of Switzerland for 1953• The Government of Switzerland also asked that the following statement be brought to the attention of the Committee on Contributions: "At the same time we wish to call your attention to the fact that the scale of contributions for 1953 and 195*+ seem s to us to be inequitable, as- the Swiss contribution works out per head of the population, at about a third higher than that of the Unit ed States, The Swiss Government, regarding this circumstance as unjustifiable, trusts that the United Nations Committee on Contributions, in reconsidering the percentages, will abide by the principle that the per capita contribution from any country must not exceed that of the country with the highest total contribution. This view was already put forward by the Swiss Delegation to the Seventh Session of the General Conference of Unesco in 1952, and the Administrative Comm issioi then took note of it (Resolution 11,2, document 7C/ADM/50 (rev.) Annex I, Page 5)." 5. The statistical information submitted by the above States has bean exami ned by the Statistical Office. It was found that the material submitted was the san e as that received through the channels regularly used for transmission of of ficial statistics. A/CW.2/R.7U English Annex I Page 1

ANNEX I

LIST OF STATES FOR WHICH A "THEORETICAL PROBABLE PERCENTAGE" IS REQUESTED BY UNESCO

Austria Cambodia Ceylon German Federal Republic Hashemite Kingdom of Korea Libya Switzerland Viet-Nam